OmiseGO: Airdrop Update

OmiseAugust 07, 2017

At OmiseGO, we believe that tokens are most useful when they are as widely distributed as possible. In the case of a permissionless proof-of-stake (PoS) network, especially one running a very economically valuable decentralized exchange trading both cryptocurrency and real-world money, a wide distribution is also critically important for network security. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time, opportunity, and technical proficiency necessary to get into the earliest moments of a token generating event. How then can a given token find its way into more hands?

In OMG’s case, 5% has already been set aside from the total issuance (see sale doc), ready to be distributed by an automatic airdrop. That is, sometime quite soon (TBA soon), every address on the Ethereum blockchain that held a balance over a minimum threshold of 0.1 ETH at a recent past block height (TBA soon) will receive a share of this 5% that is proportionate to their share of ETH.

Token sales do take significant value out of ETH, often (but not always) without giving much back; a number of token projects present this problem in a significant way. Even though OmiseGO doesn’t, due to its unique economic construction, with this airdrop gesture we also wish to underline the topic of incentive alignment with the entire Ethereum community.

Through our history with Ethereum, we have done our best to encourage an approach of simultaneous generosity and conservativism. This approach has worked well for us, but it is by no means perfect for everyone. We acknowledge that many people who have wanted to be involved with our projects have been unable due to one reason or another.

Still, we believe that introducing to a few hundred thousand account holders the possibility of being PoS validators will ultimately make the network stronger, and we hope it will create interest in OmiseGO and its underlying mechanisms as a new, complimentary construction to Ethereum for chain scaling and interoperability.